Minecraft
Minecraft is a construction game created by Mojang AB founder Markus "Notch" Persson. The game was developed on Java for PC and launched in 2011. Minecraft is the 2nd best-selling PC game of all time. The game gained notoriety for its simplistic block style graphics and self-generating objectives. The full game is, technically, free to download. However, users pay for the account for full access. Demo play is available prior to purchase. The game can only be purchased from minecraft.net for PC. Interface Much of why Minecraft is so loved by its users is because of the sandbox style customization and simple graphics. When a person purchases Minecraft for pc or gaming console, the main page is very simple, offering only a few options: News (community news), Skins (character customization), Settings (Sound, Video, Controls. etc.), Launch Options (current or previous versions), and Play. When a user clicks play, the user is prompted to a new interface. Customization Sandbox Sandbox is a style of gaming that attempts to place minimal limitations on the user. This is different than progressive style or linear gaming. The emphasis is on roaming and user selected tasks rather than following a narrative or prompted objectives. Because the game was designed as a sandbox game, users and servers can play any current or previous version of the game and customize as they choose. Minecraft is all about giving users as much affordance as possible and allowing them to choose the constraints. Skins This is the term used referring to how your player looks. Originally, users were randomly assigned either Steve or Alice. These are the two default player skins assigned to each player based on their account ID if they do not use a custom skin. Both player skins are intended to be generic representations of a human being, although the player's skin can be changed. Alex has long bright orange hair hanging to the left side, pale white skin, and dark green eyes, with a light-green shirt, a pair of brown pants, grayish boots, pinkish lips, and 3px arms. Steve has dark brown hair, dark skin, nose and mouth, and blue eyes, with a light blue shirt, a pair of blue jeans, gray shoes, and 4px arms. Users create a wide variety of skins, from anything that resembles themselves to animals, monsters, figures from real life or fictional works, and more. Users can also upload skins to websites for other users to download. Many users will use these as a template and customize the character even more to their liking. Texture Packs a constraint for a short-lived time was the graphics were fixed. Then other coders created downloadable texture packs which makes the world look that much different and unique to each user. Secondary Sites Because of constraints in the game that can be constantly being reimagined, users took it upon themselves to create more affordance within the game. Minecraft has essentially outsourced community members websites that help with the gameplay. Several are officially endorsed by minecraft.net Gameplay The name of the game literally highlight the two main aspects of the game: Mining and Crafting. Users "mine" for material and then use these materials to "craft". The game and interface promote creativity and collaboration. Some constraints within the game itself are that sometimes it not that obvious how to create something. There are also so many things that users can create as building blocks that there is an extensive wiki dedicated just for this. Much of what users need to learn comes from other players and wiki pages. Even for players who have played since the beginning, they are constantly learning new things and relearning from old things. Resources If users want to build and create stuff, which is the name of the game, they will need materials. Materials range from obvious usable items like varieties of woods, animals, and stones. Wood, for example, can be broken down into planks, slabs, fences, sticks, gates, doors, bed frames, and more. Game Modes There are 3 types of gameplay: survival, creative, and hardcore. These can be played in either single player or multiplayer. Multiplayer is where the community and game really shines. The user can, of course, play with no one else; but, for many, that is a shortlived experience. Survival This is the most commonly played version of the game. Players have to procure all resources, eat, defend off monsters, sleep, and survive while completing their objectives. Creative In this gameplay, all materials are unlocked and unlimited in the player's inventory. There is no dying, no eating, and the player can fly for easier travel. This option is generally used by people to build things in advance, as a way to troubleshoot projects before building them in survival worlds. It also gives the user the foreknowledge of how much of each material they will need to complete the build on a survival server. The unwritten ethos of Minecraft is generally: No one is really impressed if you build something awesome in this format. Hardcore This is Survival mode on the hardest setting. Once you die, that's it. Game over. Hardcore is rightly named. Beating the Game? To beat Minecraft and "win the game" -- although the community would argue there is no such thing as beating Minecraft -- one must make it to The End and defeat The Ender Dragon. Multiplayer servers run long after this happens and the Dragon can be respawned up to 30 times per server. This allows new users on the server to compete for this as an in-game achievement. Defeating the Ender Dragon is easier said than done. To the uninitiated, it may seem there is no clear goal; however, the ultimate goal is the age-old battle of confronting the dragon and slaying it at its doorstep before it comes to yours. Worlds Within the game, there are 3 separate and distinct worlds the user can travel to: Overworld, The Nether, The End. In all 3 worlds, the user can fall into The Void. Overworld This is where the user starts and the vast majority of the game is played. This is comparable to Earth. Overworld has several biomes, which look different and offer different resources. For example, there are distinct woods in different biomes and you can only find certain items in certain areas. 500px-Minecraft_2.jpg AREHL-HV.png 687474703a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f6c4a337151585a2e706e67.png Screenshot (17).png Overworld.jpg npc-village.jpg The Nether The Nether is accessed by users creating a Nether Portal. This realm, aesthetically, is the Hell of the game. There is lava and fire everywhere! Unique resources are found here. It is important to acquire materials from here if users want to make automatic farmable materials in Overworld. M424ZzA.jpg Nether.png The_Nether.png The End The Nether must be accessed prior to creating the End Portal because of specific resources. Unlike Nether portals, which can be created anywhere in Overworld, there can only be one End Portal (Like Highlander). The End is the scariest place to travel because it is riddled with lowland plains with huge gaps of nothing in between, all across an endless world of Endermen and End Cities. A player that falls into the void is never seen again... at least not for a while, and all of the stuff they were carrying is lost. Unlike Overworld and The Nether, The End has massive gaps when traveling that directly fall into The Void. Players must have the resources to fly if users want to travel the fast and never-ending expanses of this realm. 1200px-The_End.png end-general.png maxresdefault (1).jpg The Void This is when a player falls past the lowest level block of the game into the infinite abyss of space and time and the programming. It is below the lowest level, in terms of an x,y,z plane, that the worlds and programmings are built upon. At the lowest level is a material called bedrock that is nearly impossible for a player to break through. This is exposed to make The End that much more difficult. Servers The great thing about Minecraft is no two servers are alike. Ever! The rules are different on each server and the map is always different since it is randomly generated with the variety of biomes the game offers. There are websites that list a variety of servers and give ratings based on the users' experiences. Anyone can start and host a server. And for the most part, anyone can join a server. Although, there can be applications and acceptance or protocols to prevent issues within the game-- mostly griefers. All multiplayer server fall into one of the 3 game modes listed above, with Survival being the most prevalent. Servers can range anywhere from one user to hundreds or even thousands. The size of the Overworld map can be anywhere from a limited small map to an endless map. Issues with Servers A major constraint on the game of being on a server hosted by an unknown person falls into a few categories. The first is that you can spend weeks, month, or years on a server and it could be gone one day if the host decides to close it down. Many have experienced this type of frustration when they've worked for so long and have their work simple vanish. To combat such frustrations, many users take progression photos of thing they have created and post the photos elsewhere. It is also common practice to get photos both in the game and of the larger map. As an affordance, there are also filters to be applied to photos that can give a real look to the image, independent of texture packs. Community The larger Minecraft community is decentralized, unlike other popular pc games. Individual websites with forums, maps, and more are created around these smaller communities. With sandbox capability, each server can be custom tailored to the aspects and versions of the game the smaller sub-communities favor. The choice of many is a semi-vanilla* version of the game, with a few updates or mods that the creators of the server find necessary. *Vanilla is a term to refer to a game during its original form with no subsequent updates. "Builds" are a common way of expressing something you are working on. In Minecraft, the objectives for builds fall into either two categories: aesthetics or efficiency. While the goal is generally to have a good mix of both. Utilities Besides the chatbox available in-game, Many in the Minecraft community also utilize social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Youtube and Twitch.tv to enhance the experience. For many, it's all about finding the right server. Screenshot (32).png|Flying into Artore. Screenshot (18).png|Overlooking Artore, a community built city that serves as a shopping district for materials and goods. Screenshot (21).png|(left to right) Artore's Iron farm, slimeshop, shulkershop, woodshop, and fishery. Community Behaviors and Communication Minecraft offers a wide variety of experience because the rules of each server can be different. For example, on the Froobworld.com server, users are not allowed to swear. If a user types a curse word into the text box it will not appear. Screenshot (37).png|look in the text display Screenshot (38).png|the text is altered when sent. Screenshot (40).png|craftsplaining This can promote a much more positive experience in the game, as aggression is generally not tolerated on most servers. This is wildly different than first-person shooter games, where sexually abusive and/or racial slurs and comments are routinely used in an effort to minimalize or dehumanize your opponent. In Minecraft, you don't have "opposition" in this way. The problems with Minecraft is mostly Griefers. Griefers The larger Minecraft community, like many other gaming communities, have its own term for people who cause trouble on servers. They are called griefers for literally causing grief and ruining the enjoyment of the game. The term first came about in the early 2000s during the heyday of the popular online game counterstrike. [1] Griefing in Minecraft is generally used to refer to someone who joins a server and destroys builds that other people have made. This is an imposed constraint on almost every server, however, there are servers dedicated to this type of mayhem and destruction. A serious constraint the game has is it is nearly impossible to prevent griefing behaviors. A player can bounce from server to server and can cause a bunch of issues. Anywhere from simply logging on and being obnoxious, destroying other peoples accomplishments, or more nefarious ways of running scripts and mods into the server that may ruin the functionality. A major constraint is there are no databases of known and repeated griefer accounts. For example, on the froobwolrd.com server, a person recently ran a script into the server that randomly removed blocks throughout the world. The administrators of the server quickly recognized this and banned the user and subsequently performed what is called a rollback. This is when the game is reverted back to a version in a prior timeframe. This affordance is necessary for dealing with the more anarchist type of gamer who seeks pleasure in this type of disruption. Another constraint that comes up is that server creators can't always deal with the most sophisticated of griefers and hackers. The froobworld.com had to do a full server reset several years ago because of a complex algorithm embedded into the server's code. And while the user was ultimately banned from the server, their disruptive imposition is still out there for others to potentially have to deal with.